


a night to remember

by quadrille



Series: they weren't all mistakes [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 2x18, Abandonment Issues, After 2x18, During Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exes, F/M, Fix-It, Infidelity, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 13:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14379468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: She’s feeling herself getting angry again, but at least anger is better than grief.  “At least he wants me,” she says.FP gives a strangled laugh.  “D’you really doubt that about me, Alice? After all these years?”





	a night to remember

**Author's Note:**

> Written spur-of-the-moment & based on the promo for 2x19, which probs means it'll be non-canonical in just a few days! But I needed to dig into some of this good good angst ugh
> 
> I've also made a series to group together my loosely-connected, canon-adjacent or expansion-on-canon Falice one-shots, because why not.

“You went back? To _him_?” FP demands, with a steely edge of anger. (This whole situation is too familiar — it’s like they’re back there all over again, twenty years ago, when he was first thrown over for that cup of human oatmeal. Hal fucking Cooper swooping in and winning the girl, for no other reason than his stable bank account and manicured front lawn.)

Alice finds herself having to fight back oncoming tears, and she hates that wavering tremble in her voice. She’s coming apart at the seams these days. She tries to think of an explanation, and the first to come to mind is _He’s the one who’ll have me,_ or _I don’t want to be alone;_ neither of which sound acceptable, now that she thinks about it.

“If I have a chance,” she says, “to have my family back together again…” She remembers Betty’s fragile, hopeful expression when Hal walked back in through the front door. Alice tries to think of how she could explain this to her, how to tell her daughter that she’s sleeping with her boyfriend’s father, but it’s impossible. How in the world are they expected to make this work?

And yet: Forsythe Jones II is here, standing in front of her, clutching a ragged handful of wildflowers picked from the forest edge out behind the trailer park.

Alice looks it over coolly (or at least, she tries to look cool and dispassionate). “Hal gave me professionally-arranged peonies,” she says, knowing that she means for those words to hurt.

FP blinks. “But you’re allergic to peonies.”

— and she’s not prepared for how that simple, unexpected statement knocks her over, makes her breath hitch in her throat. FP takes advantage of the pause to plough on: “I fucked up,” he says simply. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve given you the cold shoulder at the diner.”

“Ya _think?_ ” She’s starting to sound a little more like her old self, acerbic and jagged.

“It was the wrong call. I was at work, I was afraid of fucking things up again — you’re still married, technically I am, too, and our kids are seeing each other — but y’know what? I don’t give a shit anymore. I thought about what you said, about us repeating all our old mistakes, and…” A breath. “It just made me think. I told you once that they weren’t all mistakes. And that still stands, Alice. The only mistake you made was marrying that piece of shit, who doesn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”

“You’ve made plenty more mistakes yourself.”

“I know.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “And I got a failed marriage behind me, too. But I wanna do better this time. You deserve better.”

“But he…” She draws in a shaky breath. They’re standing in the foyer of her house, and her gaze slips over his shoulder to the photographs on the walls, to the artfully-arranged centerpiece on the dining room table, to the window. That avoidance makes FP stiffen, brow crinkling in a confused frown.

“You’re _Alice Smith_. You’ve always had men wrapped around your finger, jumping when you say jump. You don’t take bullshit from anyone. What the hell happened?”

“A _lot of things_ , FP. You were there for some of them! Recently!” Her voice is rising, getting shriller, fraying.

“And has he been there to support you for any of it?” There’s a matching desperation in his voice now, too, a seething frustration. “I know you hate gossip, but the whole town’s buzzing with it, and you told me the rest. He tried to push your son out. He sold the Register without telling you. He asked _you_ for a divorce. To shove you out of the goddamn Blossom inheritance even while he was off fucking Penelope Blossom. How’s that knight in shining armour looking these days?”

She’s feeling herself getting angry again, but at least anger is better than grief. “At least he wants me,” she says.

FP gives a strangled laugh. “D’you really doubt that about me, Alice? After all these years?”

“For a little while, yes.”

He stares at her for a beat — simply _looks_ at her. And after a pause, FP surges forward and catches her face in his hands; somehow she’s crying and she didn’t even realise when that started, tears slipping down her cheeks, and she’s frustrated all over again that someone has to see her in this state. But his calloused thumb is gently brushing them aside and his mouth fits perfectly on hers and her hand is tangling in his flannel shirt. His cheeks are rough with stubble where her husband is clean-shaven.

Alice breaks for breath and for the first time in a long time, she finally feels centered, steadied. Their paths diverged twenty years ago when she chose one man over the other; it took them a while, a long while, to circle back. But now they have and it feels, oddly, _right._

Betty won’t be happy about this. But Alice keeps thinking back to that tense, awkward, orchestrated reunion in their dining room, with Hal’s hand feeling like an anchor settling heavily over hers, a leash going back around her neck — she’s realising, now, that that reunion was what Betty wanted. Not what Alice did.

And isn’t it about time she took what she wanted?

“This is still complicated,” she says, burying her face in his chest and letting out a long breath.

FP’s arm is warm around her shoulders, his lips against her forehead.

“What in life isn’t?”


End file.
